"Do all that stuff we have to do to shoot at him and then FIRE TORPEDOES!"
— Submarine Captain, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
A lot of people haven't noticed there's this really gross misunderstanding of the military across media, especially children's media. Many shows constantly get militaristic protocol wrong, in turn making us all look completely incompetent. Not only that, but soldiers are commonly portrayed as cold, emotionless robots, or sociopathic jerks, both with a little bit of Dumb Jock on the side.
"I mean, the dialogue, they're all… yelling back to Houston as if somehow Houston's going to help them [rescue their crewmate] right here! And George Clooney is referring to this other astronaut as "Dr. Stone", like they've… they haven't even met each other yet. He's asking permission from somebody, I don't know, to go and help her out in the— I mean, it's not astronaut behavior, it's not logical behavior, it's so execrable from an actual practical demonstration of what the reality of space flight is like.
"The most experienced astronaut in American history is a woman— it's Peggy Whitson. She's been in space longer than any other American; she commanded the International Space Station twice, she's done ten space walks, she was NASA's chief astronaut. In this movie, Sandra Bullock has only been an astronaut for like… less than a year, and when she's faced with a problem, she's panicking and has no idea what to do, and George Clooney is driving around like some sort of space cowboy as the only person that really knows what's going on, and it's like they met when they were out on this space walk. And then it's like, he's trying to pick her up during a space walk! And what is he even doing out there, driving around in his jet pack? I mean, we don't go outside recreationally.
"It's so different than the actual people that are exploring space, that devote their lives to being astronauts, that are actually on the Space Station right now. The wonderful human role model examples we have of people who are doing these things. I think it set back a little girl's vision of what a woman astronaut could be an entire generation. Sandra Bullock did a great job of portraying this character in the movie, but I just think the character that they wrote for her was really disappointing. That's what I would've changed: get the characters right, get it to represent what astronauts are actually like, and then build the story around that. Don't just make it The Perils of Pauline, where she's strapped to the train tracks and she needs George Clooney to magically appear next to her to tell her which book to open to be able to do the right thing. Real astronauts recognize the seriousness of their job. The fact that it's always life or death, and that we're there as the representatives of seven-and-a-half billion people. Everybody's trusting us to be good at this, to have spent decades getting good at this.
"If you want to know what a spacewalk looks like, there's never been a better movie though than "Gravity". That opening scene is magnificent for the visual impact and the beauty of the silent turning world and the resolution of each of the fine things and the lighting, it's wonderfully good. It gives you the raw emotional sense of a space walk. Just don't pay attention to what the astronauts are actually doing."
— Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield
(having flown on the Space Shuttle twice and spent six months on the ISS) on Gravity
(having flown on the Space Shuttle twice and spent six months on the ISS) on Gravity"There is so much wrong there that it's just excruciating to watch. The idea of an alternative history where the Soviets with Alexei Leonov were the first to land on the moon. I really think it's a clever possibility for plots, but it… very soon, just a few episodes in, everything became sort-of cartoonish. It sounds like a bunch of actors sitting around a table pretending to be soldiers; "Take point!" and "Sound off!" How come nobody on the American team, not one, speaks a word of Russian? They knew there were gonna be Russians there. I used to be a combat fighter pilot with an armed F-18 intercepting Soviet bombers in the Cold War. These are ostensibly trained astronauts and marines. That's not how anybody's gonna behave, especially when the stakes are that high! They recognize the incredible seriousness of shooting a Soviet, a Russian. You're gonna have to be absolutely sure that there was a threat."
— Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield on For All Mankind
